A £2.5 million appeal has been launched by charity Autism Together to fund a digital health project to help care for those with severe autism.
The North-West charity aims to build the world’s first autism assessment and diagnostic centre in Wirral, where biometric technology will be used to measure physiological properties of people with autism.
The charity’s original residential home, Raby Hall will be replaced with an autism-specific building for up to 12 patients.
The centre will provide wearable light-weight biometric wristbands to people with autism to measure minute physiological changes such as surface skin temperate, heart rate and swearing. The wristbands will be intended for those who may be non-verbal or unable to communicate how they feel. The real-time data provided by the wristbands could help carers identify periods of high anxiety, enabling them to step in and head off any dramatic behaviour changes.
Autism Together will conduct an initial trial with the wristbands in spring this year with seven residents at care homes in Wirral.
Information on anxiety levels will be cross-referenced with detailed staff notes on the dates, times and locations of behaviour changes and extreme incidents. Staff will take note of the levels of heat, noise and light in each situation and will merge this data with biometrics readings to understand how people are reacting to sensory stimuli.
Three quarters on the autism spectrum experience sensory differences which can cause pain and distress. Stimuli such as loud noise, unusual texture, heat, smell and bright light can cause considerable distress, of which they are unable to convey to their carers and may be the cause of unpredictable behaviour.
Sensory differences were only acknowledged in the early 2000s as a key part of the condition.
CEO of Autism Together, Robin Bush, said: “This is a very significant project backed by a real sense of urgency as the numbers of those diagnosed with autism increase and the NHS still relies on traditional approaches – such as observation only – to try to get to grips with complex autistic behaviour. Introducing this new technology into autism care will be game changing – but we can’t build our assessment centre without funding and we hope our supporters will get behind us.”
Biometrics used in autism has been studied by US researchers at Boston’s Northeastern University, Maine Medical Centre and the University of Pittsburgh. The scientists developed biometric wristbands and collected thousands of examples of challenging behaviour from 20 young people with autism. The researchers found that body signals collected through biometrics can predict sometimes violent behavioural changes before they happen.
Northeastern University’s Dr Matthew Goodwin said, “Our original concept with biometrics was that we couldn’t bring people with autism into the lab, so we would take the lab to the world in order to learn about autistic behaviour.”
Bush said: “Our vision at Autism Together is to set the standard for a new generation of inpatient assessment and treatment using a high-tech approach, so that people with autism can be fully understood and helped to live the best lives possible. We’re convinced that in fifty years biometrics will be accepted as a baseline for understanding autistic behaviour.”
